


you take a breath and then another

by saudadeonly



Series: in a world three degrees north [6]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: (mentioned) - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Brotherly Bonding, Death Eater Sirius Black, Evan Rosier (mentioned) - Freeform, First War with Voldemort, Gen, Original Character(s), Post-Hogwarts, Regulus Black Lives, Sibling Bonding, but tecnically, not really - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:48:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24669418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saudadeonly/pseuds/saudadeonly
Summary: New Year's Eve on the edge of a cliff. Regulus has regrets and wishes; Sirius has nothing at all. But at least they are on the same side.
Relationships: Regulus Black & Sirius Black
Series: in a world three degrees north [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1592227
Comments: 16
Kudos: 114





	you take a breath and then another

**Author's Note:**

> I should not be doing this, I have four exams in like a week, oops.

_December 1981_

The ground is cold underneath Regulus’s fingers as he braces his hand on it to sit himself down on the patch of dry grass at the edge of the cliff. His legs dangle over the ledge and his stomach twists itself up as he gauges the long way down that might await him at the slightest slip.

Sirius doesn’t look at him but he does move his hand toward something at his side and hands him a bottle of Ogden’s, which is not nearly as empty as his eyes. He’s shivering but his fingers don’t tremble as he brings his cigarette to his mouth and takes a drag.

Regulus casts a warming charm, first on Sirius then on himself, and stuffs his hands into the pockets of his coat. Sirius’s shivering lessens infinitesimally, his shoulders drawing up. He gives a small nod of acknowledgement.

Regulus opens the Firewhisky and swallows down three gulps before he gives it back to Sirius, who doesn’t hesitate to bring it to his lips and drink. It burns down his throat, but Regulus has long ago learned to swallow the bite.

Far below them, the ocean laps at the rocks, relentless, and the sky above drifts by, unbothered. The cottage behind them—he still thinks of it as Uncle Alphard’s cottage, even though he’s been dead for nearly five years and Regulus himself has been its main resident for over two years—stands tall, dark and irrefutable. Regulus wishes he could be more like any of them.

He fingers the chain around his neck, the locket hanging from it, now harmless and charred, a reminder of how far he and Sirius have come, of how much they’ve accomplished—but also of how much more awaits them. The ring and the cup are already taken care of, both of them resting safely in the drawers of the desk in Alphard’s study, but Regulus knows, as does Sirius, that there are more. How many more, neither one can tell.

_Seven_ , Sirius said, citing the reason they both knew well—the most powerful, the most balanced number in use of magic; their mother made sure they knew that before they could properly walk. _Seven parts of a soul, six Horcruxes._

Two years to have found and destroyed three. But they were long, hard years and each passing day begs the question how many more there can be before Sirius ends up the one destroyed.

Regulus wishes he could be the one to don the mask like armour, to be the one to shield Sirius for a change, that Sirius could be the one to stay home, safe and behind so many protective charms that Voldemort himself wouldn’t be able to get through. But Regulus is dead, at least to the rest of the world, and right now that is their greatest advantage.

“I’m sorry about Rosie,” Regulus tells him.

Sirius, to his credit, doesn’t flinch. He only takes a drag of the cigarette and says in an exhale of smoke and shaky breath, “I’m sorry about Evan.”

“He was more your friend than mine, at this point,” Regulus says softly, but the sting of Evan’s death has yet to let go. He is glad to know that Evan, at least, went down on his own terms, if with questionable loyalties; though the fact that he was questioning his loyalty to Voldemort brings Regulus little satisfaction in the face of his bitter and unnecessary death, he is proud of Evan for having even considered it, for listening to Sirius before Regulus dared to. Only one more thing he can add to his list of regrets: he never told Evan how proud he was of him, how sorry for everything he had put him through; that he was and will always be his best friend.

“It’s a worse world regardless,” Sirius says. He sounds dead and shaken and freezing but Regulus cannot blame him. Rosie was his best friend, his most constant supporter through all of this; that he was forced to lose her is a cruel, cruel thing but the fact that he has to go on and serve the man that is in a way responsible for her death is yet crueler.

“Yeah,” Regulus agrees, reaching over to swipe the Firewhisky and take another swing, “it is.”

Sirius stays silent. His profile, the line nearly identical to Regulus’s, as they were constantly told, is outlined against the starry sky, the waxing moon. Regulus’s heart tugs apart and breaks for him, for all that he has done and failed to do. He was a Gryffindor, a Marauder, and maybe he still has the possibility of being one again but right now, he is just a man, barely grown up from a boy, as vicious as he is devoted, who hates as fiercely as he loves, carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, grieving the death of a friend. There was a time one could read every emotion from his brother's face, could know what he was feeling just by glancing at him.

There isn't much on Sirius's face these days, not beyond the lines and dark bags around his eyes.

Regulus cannot stand it so he looks away, towards the sea below, towards the dark horizon. The village down the hill is lit in soft, flickering lights, some of the Muggle youth shouting and laughing in anticipation of midnight, only minutes away. Regulus knows they have fireworks and he is looking forward to it, those little flashes of light in a world that has gone entirely too dark.

Sirius wasn’t with him for Christmas; he only arrived a couple of hours ago, silent, dejected, but the Daily Prophet, with a number of death reports and missing cases, told Regulus all he needed to know about his previous whereabouts anyway. He doesn’t mind Sirius’s absence, but it hurts him to see what happens to him in that time, how deeper into himself he goes. He’s always come back but on some days, more so in the last month, Regulus fears he won’t.

It’s a scary thing, watching someone die with their heart still beating.

He wonders if that’s how Sirius felt when he joined the Death Eaters to protect his stupid little brother, when he stood as a shield between him and their parents, expecting to wage a war against an army, only to be stabbed in the back instead.

Regulus closes his eyes. In a whole lifetime of regret, in years and years of trying, he can never repay Sirius, can never undo the pain he’s caused him over and over again. He still remembers the words Sirius, at his wit’s end, beaten down to the fucking bottom, shouted at him. They were the first words to really reach him, to hit home, to twist in his heart, and make it bleed straight out of his mouth.

_I don’t need you to be with me, I just need you not to be with them._

Regulus didn’t know then and he doesn’t know now how to make any of it better. But he likes to think he’s succeeding in trying.

There is a series of loud bangs, nearly explosions, and they both look up to see that the village boys have released the fireworks that now crackle and light up the sky. Regulus hums at the sight, always feeling a little childish delight when he gets the pleasure to watch fireworks.

Christmases in the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black were always a stuffy affair, for which they were forced to dress up in the most stifling of robes so that Walburga and Orion could parade them in front of their family and other associates like trophies, either in the house they were forced to call home or whichever soulless mansion the party had been organised at. Cries and complaints were always dealt with quickly and quietly, often before anyone could even blink, but they held a promise of disciplining for either one of them that was acting up—a disciplining that Sirius always ended up getting the brunt of.

But for New Year’s Eve, their house remained blessedly empty while their parents went off to rub elbows with ministry officials and left their sons in the care of their house-elves. Sirius, before he went off to Hogwarts, always tiptoed into Regulus’s room and took him up to the roof where, swathed in blankets and drinking hot chocolate Regulus had pleaded out of Kreacher, they watched the skyline of London bathed in an explosion of colours. Regulus remembers thinking that whatever Muggles had done to deserve the treatment their mother was slowly imposing on them they surely couldn’t be that bad if they managed to create something so stunning without even the barest knowledge of magic.

His mother spent the rest of his life as she knew it trying to teach him the opposite.

One particularly large firework flies into the sky, dispersing itself into streaks of blue and green and golden that, rather than a star-like figure, dance and sizzle all around until it almost seems that there is a city in the sky, a reminder of the beauty that still lives and breathes.

“ _Bonne année_ , Reggie,” Sirius whispers, his words slipping into each other almost seamlessly. He is always different when he speaks in French, not softer exactly, but less rough around the edges, as if something in him changes when his language does. It’s not an unpleasant thought—that Sirius is a different person sometimes, that he has the potential to be more than he has been moulded into.

Regulus wonders if there is a world where Sirius _is_ different—a world where he chose his friends, his freedom, and his happiness over Regulus and finds he doesn’t mind the possibility much; even if that means his life ended in the cave, going out with the worst memories at the front of his mind, he hopes Sirius is happy there.

“ _Bonne année_ , Sirius,” Regulus says back, smiling gently.

The fireworks fade over time, the shouts from the village settling down and drawing away, the alcohol in the bottle slowly disappearing as they pass it back and forth, accompanied by soft words, memories that are not so painful now in the darkness of the night, in the light of the new year, and with each passing breath, Sirius’s shoulders sag. His hair, long and wavy but too tangled, hangs around his face as he leans forward, tipped far too much in the direction of the ocean.

The cold bites into their hands, slipping under their robes, the warming charms having worn off, and Regulus doesn’t quite trust himself, even less so Sirius, with a bottle of alcohol at the edge of a cliff anymore. He nudges Sirius, somehow having managed to get himself on his knees and under Sirius’s arm without even being in the danger of dying.

“ _Allons_ ,” he says softly, drawing them both up to stand.

Sirius is light against him, even with leaning almost his entire weight on him, the ridges of his spine prominent through his robes and cloak when Regulus readjusts him. They trudge towards the cottage, the door opening with an awkward tap of Regulus’s wand, the lights flickering on as soon as they step over the threshold. Regulus leads them past the kitchen, up the small flight of stairs, into the room that has always been unmistakably Sirius’s, even when Alphard was still alive.

The dresser is littered with pictures, small tokens Sirius has allowed himself here in this house that is unknown to all: there is James, of course—Regulus isn’t quite sure when he stopped being Potter, someone who stole Sirius away, and became James, Sirius’s other brother—and Lily right along with him; a few of Remus and a number of their group photos, all of them strategically cut to miss one person, occasionally accompanied by Marlene and Dorcas. There are only a couple of the two of them but Regulus doesn’t mind—Sirius has him as a reminder that he is here, he doesn’t need a picture for it. The one of Evan and Rosie, blonde hair like halos around their heads, both laughing as they lean into each other, brother and sister, the martyr and the avenger, makes his mouth taste like iron but he is comforted by the fact that wherever they are now, they have each other.

He lays Sirius down on the bed and somehow manages to wrangle him out of his coat, throwing it on the chair nearby. Sirius is awake, grey eyes blinking slowly as they search Regulus’s face. He reaches out, swallowing, and touches the pale, age-faded scar across Regulus’s throat.

Regulus can only imagine a sliver of what that scar represents to Sirius. He has his own, plenty of them, but Regulus thinks this one is the greatest reminder of his pain and suffering, of all he has had to give up and destroy. Regulus remembers that night in flashes, although he has tried for years to get back the memories that his mother created and then took; he remembers Sirius on the floor, screaming, and his mother’s pointed wand, first at Sirius and then at him, his father’s booming, unforgiving voice and the cold bite of a blade against the skin of his throat. He thinks sometimes it is better that he doesn’t know and always feels the pang of guilt at leaving Sirius to be the only one to carry the burden.

“ _Pas de regret_ ,” Sirius whispers now, curling his hand into a fist as he draws it back.

A lump forms in Regulus’s throat. “ _Je t’aime_ , Sirius,” he murmurs into the space that isn’t quite in the right direction but loud enough that he knows Sirius can hear him.

Sirius pauses, blinking. His eyes aren’t wide, exactly, but there is a surprise to them that seems almost youthful. Then his entire face softens, opens like cracks through a pavement, and he reaches out again to sweep Regulus’s hair out of his eyes. “Love you too, little brother,” he says softly, then closes his eyes, his breaths coming in soft and slow.

Regulus knows better than to believe it but he takes the dismissal for what it is and stumbles toward the door. Once he steadies himself against the doorframe, he looks back at Sirius—except there is no Sirius anymore. Instead, curled over the thick duvets, specked with starlight, Padfoot lies, his side rising and falling steadily.

Outside, the sky is bathed in red and gold.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope, with current events, everyone is staying safe but also contributing to a better world. In case someone wants to come vent at me, you can do so at my frequently used but rarely active Tumblr [saudadeonly](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/saudadeonly), to which I will also change my username here.


End file.
